Which is better for a lightweight laptop: Mint Cinnamon or Zorin OS?

I use Mint on several of my older Macs, and honestly, the green theme isn't an issue; you can change the wallpaper to whatever you want. It's fully customizable!

I’ve installed Mint on older Macs with 4GB of RAM and it's been smooth sailing. Windows users tend to overestimate memory needs, so don't worry too much about the RAM limit!

There are definitely some lightweight options out there. For example, Mint also comes with an Xfce version, which is a great choice for low-powered machines. Start with Mint Cinnamon and if it feels sluggish, give Mint Xfce a shot. Personally, I think Mint does everything Zorin does, but it does it better. But hey, Zorin isn’t a bad choice either! Plus, there's a Zorin Light version for older hardware, much like the Mint Xfce version.

If you're going for lightweight, also consider Lubuntu with the LXQt desktop environment. It's seriously light and works great on older hardware. Both Mint and Zorin are based on Ubuntu, so they share a lot in common in terms of software availability.

Mint has solid customization options. It's not as extensive as KDE Plasma, but definitely better than Gnome. I haven't tried Zorin because their pricing model rubs me the wrong way—they seem to push their paid version too much for what you get. I believe you can find free alternatives to their paid features.